Pfund awarded the 2024 ICRG Scientific Achievement Award

Psychology professor, Dr. Rory Pfund, receives highest honor within gambling research community

The International Center for Responsible Gaming, or ICRG, has awarded Dr. Rory A Pfund, research assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Research Director of the Institute for Gambling Education & Research, with the 2024 Scientific Achievement Award. The ICRG has been the world leader in funding peer-reviewed, scientific research on gambling disorder for over 25 years. In addition to this award, Dr. Pfund has received four research grants from this organization.

The ICRG lauded Pfund as a highly productive, early career scientist with international impact on gambling research. The awards committee particularly highlighted Pfund’s leadership on the effectiveness of psychological treatment for those with a psychiatric diagnosis of gambling disorder. After years of compiling data from every published clinical trial of treatments for gambling disorder, Pfund has created an open-access database of these trials. This database has not only elevated research on gambling disorder treatment but has also positioned the research as a model for understanding treatment effectiveness for other mental health and addictive disorders.

Using this database, Pfund has published series of meta-analytic reviews that were instrumental in the American Psychological Association’s Society of Clinical Psychology officially recognizing cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) as an evidence-based treatment for gambling disorder. This recognition is significant because no gambling disorder treatment has received this distinction since gambling disorder was designated as a psychiatric disorder in 1980. Pfund, an alumnus of the University of Memphis’s clinical psychology program, is the youngest person to ever receive the ICRG’s Scientific Achievement Award.

Arthur Paikowsky, ICRG’s President, stated, that Pfund’s “groundbreaking research has not only contributed to our understanding of gambling disorder but has also laid the foundation for future advancements in the treatment and prevention of addiction. We look forward to seeing how his work will continue to shape the field.”

For more information on this award or research, contact Pfund at rapfund@memphis.edu.